Sunday, January 11, 2004
SEABISCUIT AND CAESAR:
Two pieces of propaganda I encountered over the holidays have already caused glee among liberals. Good conservatives should be warned to avoid the typical left wing misrepresentations in the movie Seabiscuit and the book The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome by Michael Parenti. I have bravely perused them to spare my readers.
Naturally I don't expose myself to the unwashed masses in actual theaters, and only now have I had time in my busy schedule of exposing liberalism to rent this film. We definitely need to look this gift horse in the mouth, because it is just as full of danger as the one the Greeks left for Troy. The movie is made with great skill in all technical aspects -- more to be regretted, since it is misused for a bad end. For instance, this is one of the least padded films I have ever seen. Every scene cuts right to the point. Since the director also wrote the screenplay it stayed focussed throughout on his goal of warping our minds.
The movie cynically plays up the angle exploited by the real horse's owner in the depression years of the 1930's. Seabiscuit was supposedly a neglected, ugly animal written off by the racing establishment, who became a national hero as an underdog. Much is made of the crowds of hopeless suffering people cheering on this symbolic champion of the "little people", with narration by a man who usually does those left wing tax-supported PBS documentaries, no doubt to help remind viewers those same crowds were turning to FDR and the Democrats for economic hope. The film also throws in the usual lefty feel-good junk about personal struggles to triumph over adversity by the horse owner, trainer, and jocky (a literal "little guy"). This new age fluff works in making the viewers feel uplifted and happy about the triumph over the powers that be. As the early Scrooge would say, Humbug.
The horse owner is portrayed as a struggling bicycle mechanic who just stumbled into the car business by chance. According to the book, he really owned the biggest auto distributorship in the world. Was he selling cheap cars for the masses, like Chevys or Fords? No, he got rich selling Buicks. Some popular champion!! And of course the movie tries to emphasize the determined virtue of the characters as the reason for the success of the horse, instead of the real truth -- Seabiscuit finally beat War Admiral only because the owner's wife "had pinned her medal of Saint Christopher, patron saint of travelers" onto the saddlecloth. Secular leftys wouldn't ever want to emphasize any religious connection!!
The worst shell game played by this film is about the horse itself. They want us to believe it was just a useness nag who couldn't win until he was treated with love by a caring trainer. One reviewer in the New York Times (of course) called it a "Cinderella story". In fact, the horse was more like "Michael Hastings, a forklift driver living in a country town in New South Wales", that one historian has now determined to be "the rightful heir to the British throne". (Read about him at Briton living in Australia claims his right to the Windsors' throne.)
Seabiscuit's grandsire was actually Man o' War, a champion of both the Preakness and Belmont two decades before. The equine so-called champion of the underdogs was just as much of an inheritor as George W. Bush and just as phony a "little guy" as that Yale son of Wall Street, Howard Dean. If you want more evidence of what a public relations scam this "anti-establishment" hero was, consider that the villain of the movie, the awful rich owner of War Admiral, was himself the owner of Man 0' War. He knew full well Seabiscuit was not a nothing from nowhere. Fortunately, Karl Rove has no similar incentive to pretend his candidate is facing a nobody just to sell tickets.
This liberal attempt to cash in on the popularity of someone of good breeding is not a new con game (though usually it involves people, not animals). Parenti's new book tries to claim for the left a man who can't defend himself because he has been dead for over two thousand years. If the reader hadn't been warned already by the book's subtitle, or by the favorable quote on the back from notorious radical Howard Zinn, this author is kind enough to set forth his agenda in the introduction:
"The prevailing opinion among historians, ancient and modern alike, is that the senatorial assassins were intent upon restoring republican liberties by doing away with a despotic usurper. ... In this book I present an alternative explanation: The Senate aristocrats killed Caesar because they perceived him to be a popular leader who threatened their privileged interests. By this view, the deed was more an act of treason than tyrannicide, one incident in a line of political murders dating back across the better part of a century, a dramatic manifestation of a long-standing struggle between opulent conservatives and popularly elected reformers."
Caesar was indeed part and parcel of the ruling crowd of his day, and of noble birth, not some new rich up from the grass roots. But the truth has never deterred leftys from trying to portray their betters as populists, nor has the hypocrisy of ignoring Caesar's ownership of slaves. (Consider how they have ignored Jefferson's crude sexual exploitation of his own helpless human property.)
The author, wearing his liberal-colored glasses, constantly attacks centuries of historians for being slanted advocates of a long-dead establisment. He ties it all to "land reform", which he says the good guys were for and the awful conservatives in the Senate were against. Why do poor people need land anyway? Haven't we heard this tired radical refrain before about the traditional elite in Latin America? Were the assassinated Gracchi brothers the Kennedys of their day? Was Julius Caesar, who sought to circumvent the old political system, the Howard Dean of his time? The poison here is not just insidious but very subtle. He never actually makes those comparisons, but he sets up the syllogisms so that the readers will jump to those conclusions on their own.
This is most clear with his attacks on Cicero, praised by conservatives for saving the republic from subversive conspiracies. In a chaper called "Cicero's Witch-hunt" Parenti portrays him as a cross between Joe McCarthy and John Ashcroft, condemning proto-leftists in show trials with trumped up phony evidence. He never actually ties the Roman to the modern examples, but it's clear what he wants you to think.
Parenti also denounces Cato, portrayed here as a drunk who traded his wife back and forth "like so many game pieces", described as nominally "devoted to the public, but "the public that counted was Cato's own class, the hereditary nobility"". This, again, is so he can swipe at his real modern day target. "Today, the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank, is named after the illustrious reactionary because he resisted Caesar's rule and supposedly championed liberty. Needless to say, the narrow class nature of that liberty remains unacknowledged by Cato's admirers."
But to quote more of these left-wing rants would be self-abuse. Stay away from this liberal propaganda unless you want to risk having your whole view of history corrupted, with possibly dangerous effects on your vote in this current vital political year.
Two pieces of propaganda I encountered over the holidays have already caused glee among liberals. Good conservatives should be warned to avoid the typical left wing misrepresentations in the movie Seabiscuit and the book The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome by Michael Parenti. I have bravely perused them to spare my readers.
Naturally I don't expose myself to the unwashed masses in actual theaters, and only now have I had time in my busy schedule of exposing liberalism to rent this film. We definitely need to look this gift horse in the mouth, because it is just as full of danger as the one the Greeks left for Troy. The movie is made with great skill in all technical aspects -- more to be regretted, since it is misused for a bad end. For instance, this is one of the least padded films I have ever seen. Every scene cuts right to the point. Since the director also wrote the screenplay it stayed focussed throughout on his goal of warping our minds.
The movie cynically plays up the angle exploited by the real horse's owner in the depression years of the 1930's. Seabiscuit was supposedly a neglected, ugly animal written off by the racing establishment, who became a national hero as an underdog. Much is made of the crowds of hopeless suffering people cheering on this symbolic champion of the "little people", with narration by a man who usually does those left wing tax-supported PBS documentaries, no doubt to help remind viewers those same crowds were turning to FDR and the Democrats for economic hope. The film also throws in the usual lefty feel-good junk about personal struggles to triumph over adversity by the horse owner, trainer, and jocky (a literal "little guy"). This new age fluff works in making the viewers feel uplifted and happy about the triumph over the powers that be. As the early Scrooge would say, Humbug.
The horse owner is portrayed as a struggling bicycle mechanic who just stumbled into the car business by chance. According to the book, he really owned the biggest auto distributorship in the world. Was he selling cheap cars for the masses, like Chevys or Fords? No, he got rich selling Buicks. Some popular champion!! And of course the movie tries to emphasize the determined virtue of the characters as the reason for the success of the horse, instead of the real truth -- Seabiscuit finally beat War Admiral only because the owner's wife "had pinned her medal of Saint Christopher, patron saint of travelers" onto the saddlecloth. Secular leftys wouldn't ever want to emphasize any religious connection!!
The worst shell game played by this film is about the horse itself. They want us to believe it was just a useness nag who couldn't win until he was treated with love by a caring trainer. One reviewer in the New York Times (of course) called it a "Cinderella story". In fact, the horse was more like "Michael Hastings, a forklift driver living in a country town in New South Wales", that one historian has now determined to be "the rightful heir to the British throne". (Read about him at Briton living in Australia claims his right to the Windsors' throne.)
Seabiscuit's grandsire was actually Man o' War, a champion of both the Preakness and Belmont two decades before. The equine so-called champion of the underdogs was just as much of an inheritor as George W. Bush and just as phony a "little guy" as that Yale son of Wall Street, Howard Dean. If you want more evidence of what a public relations scam this "anti-establishment" hero was, consider that the villain of the movie, the awful rich owner of War Admiral, was himself the owner of Man 0' War. He knew full well Seabiscuit was not a nothing from nowhere. Fortunately, Karl Rove has no similar incentive to pretend his candidate is facing a nobody just to sell tickets.
This liberal attempt to cash in on the popularity of someone of good breeding is not a new con game (though usually it involves people, not animals). Parenti's new book tries to claim for the left a man who can't defend himself because he has been dead for over two thousand years. If the reader hadn't been warned already by the book's subtitle, or by the favorable quote on the back from notorious radical Howard Zinn, this author is kind enough to set forth his agenda in the introduction:
"The prevailing opinion among historians, ancient and modern alike, is that the senatorial assassins were intent upon restoring republican liberties by doing away with a despotic usurper. ... In this book I present an alternative explanation: The Senate aristocrats killed Caesar because they perceived him to be a popular leader who threatened their privileged interests. By this view, the deed was more an act of treason than tyrannicide, one incident in a line of political murders dating back across the better part of a century, a dramatic manifestation of a long-standing struggle between opulent conservatives and popularly elected reformers."
Caesar was indeed part and parcel of the ruling crowd of his day, and of noble birth, not some new rich up from the grass roots. But the truth has never deterred leftys from trying to portray their betters as populists, nor has the hypocrisy of ignoring Caesar's ownership of slaves. (Consider how they have ignored Jefferson's crude sexual exploitation of his own helpless human property.)
The author, wearing his liberal-colored glasses, constantly attacks centuries of historians for being slanted advocates of a long-dead establisment. He ties it all to "land reform", which he says the good guys were for and the awful conservatives in the Senate were against. Why do poor people need land anyway? Haven't we heard this tired radical refrain before about the traditional elite in Latin America? Were the assassinated Gracchi brothers the Kennedys of their day? Was Julius Caesar, who sought to circumvent the old political system, the Howard Dean of his time? The poison here is not just insidious but very subtle. He never actually makes those comparisons, but he sets up the syllogisms so that the readers will jump to those conclusions on their own.
This is most clear with his attacks on Cicero, praised by conservatives for saving the republic from subversive conspiracies. In a chaper called "Cicero's Witch-hunt" Parenti portrays him as a cross between Joe McCarthy and John Ashcroft, condemning proto-leftists in show trials with trumped up phony evidence. He never actually ties the Roman to the modern examples, but it's clear what he wants you to think.
Parenti also denounces Cato, portrayed here as a drunk who traded his wife back and forth "like so many game pieces", described as nominally "devoted to the public, but "the public that counted was Cato's own class, the hereditary nobility"". This, again, is so he can swipe at his real modern day target. "Today, the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank, is named after the illustrious reactionary because he resisted Caesar's rule and supposedly championed liberty. Needless to say, the narrow class nature of that liberty remains unacknowledged by Cato's admirers."
But to quote more of these left-wing rants would be self-abuse. Stay away from this liberal propaganda unless you want to risk having your whole view of history corrupted, with possibly dangerous effects on your vote in this current vital political year.
Tuesday, January 06, 2004
VOX DEI:
"Pat Robertson said Friday that God told him President Bush will be re-elected in a landslide. "I think George Bush is going to win in a walk," the religious broadcaster said on his "700 Club" program ... "I really believe I'm hearing from the Lord it's going to be like a blowout election in 2004. It's shaping up that way," Robertson said." This story means that it's all over and we don't even have to bother to vote now. Of course some liberal dared to question whether it was God's voice or just Karl Rove's. I think he just got inside information that God is using Diebold as his instument on earth.
"Pat Robertson said Friday that God told him President Bush will be re-elected in a landslide. "I think George Bush is going to win in a walk," the religious broadcaster said on his "700 Club" program ... "I really believe I'm hearing from the Lord it's going to be like a blowout election in 2004. It's shaping up that way," Robertson said." This story means that it's all over and we don't even have to bother to vote now. Of course some liberal dared to question whether it was God's voice or just Karl Rove's. I think he just got inside information that God is using Diebold as his instument on earth.
DEMOCRACY MEANS NEVER HAVING TO SAY "DUCK":
According to MP calls Radio 4 listeners 'bastards' over vigilante vote, "Listeners to BBC Radio 4's Today programme were asked to suggest a piece of legislation to improve life in Britain, with the promise that an MP would then attempt to get it onto the statute books. But yesterday, 26,000 votes later, the winning proposal was denounced as a "ludicrous, brutal, unworkable blood-stained piece of legislation" - by Stephen Pound, the very MP whose job it is to try to push it through Parliament. Mr Pound's reaction was provoked by the news that the winner of Today's "Listeners' Law" poll was a plan to allow homeowners "to use any means to defend their home from intruders" - a prospect that could see householders free to kill burglars, without question. "The people have spoken," the Labour MP replied to the programme, "... the bastards. ... Do we really want a law that says you can slaughter anyone who climbs in your window?"" Why yes, that's exactly what we do want. Trust a liberal to claim they are for democracy, then back down when he doesn't like the results. Yes, the voting was obviously "hijacked by supporters of Tony Martin, the Norfolk farmer who was jailed for shooting a burglar. The winning proposal enjoyed a late surge in support in the final 24 hours of the poll", but hey, if organizing over the internet is good for Howard Dean, then why not for those of us who get all hot and bothered over firearms?
According to MP calls Radio 4 listeners 'bastards' over vigilante vote, "Listeners to BBC Radio 4's Today programme were asked to suggest a piece of legislation to improve life in Britain, with the promise that an MP would then attempt to get it onto the statute books. But yesterday, 26,000 votes later, the winning proposal was denounced as a "ludicrous, brutal, unworkable blood-stained piece of legislation" - by Stephen Pound, the very MP whose job it is to try to push it through Parliament. Mr Pound's reaction was provoked by the news that the winner of Today's "Listeners' Law" poll was a plan to allow homeowners "to use any means to defend their home from intruders" - a prospect that could see householders free to kill burglars, without question. "The people have spoken," the Labour MP replied to the programme, "... the bastards. ... Do we really want a law that says you can slaughter anyone who climbs in your window?"" Why yes, that's exactly what we do want. Trust a liberal to claim they are for democracy, then back down when he doesn't like the results. Yes, the voting was obviously "hijacked by supporters of Tony Martin, the Norfolk farmer who was jailed for shooting a burglar. The winning proposal enjoyed a late surge in support in the final 24 hours of the poll", but hey, if organizing over the internet is good for Howard Dean, then why not for those of us who get all hot and bothered over firearms?
PAGING SENATOR SANTORUM:
The Pennsylvania Republican was more wise than we knew when he warned us of the consequences of the Supreme Court's striking down sodomy laws. Pop icons now seem to feel free to take up with other species. See the shocking evidence for yourself. The typically liberal Cosmic Iguana has engaged in locker room bragging by posting an alleged picture of Britney Spears dallying with him in the bath. Be astounded at Britney Annuls Marriage, Gets Kinky With Iguana.
The Pennsylvania Republican was more wise than we knew when he warned us of the consequences of the Supreme Court's striking down sodomy laws. Pop icons now seem to feel free to take up with other species. See the shocking evidence for yourself. The typically liberal Cosmic Iguana has engaged in locker room bragging by posting an alleged picture of Britney Spears dallying with him in the bath. Be astounded at Britney Annuls Marriage, Gets Kinky With Iguana.
VACATION BOOK REPORT, PART ONE:
I didn't spend all the last two weeks skiing, sunning, and swimming. I also read, beginning with "Negro President": Jefferson and the Slave Power by Garry Wills. (You can also find an excerpt from this on the web in The New York Review of Books.) Wills explains how the "three-fifths" compromise in the Constitution, which counted each slave as three-fifths of a person for Congressional representation, and therefore for Presidential electoral votes, made Jefferson's victory in 1800 possible despite his getting fewer votes. (Don't mention Florida 2000 to me again!) He claims the logic of this so-called corrupt bargain between Southern slave owners and northern democrats led them to further tyranny to protect slavery, including censorship and destruction of civil liberties in the northern states, and even politically motivated attempted impeachments. Now my faithful readers will no doubt expect me to point to all this as an example of the hypocrisy of current Democrats, who claim to represent the will of the majority and stand for judicial independence. No, I'm going to denounce this book instead, no matter how well written and researched it is.
Jefferson is praised as an icon by today's liberals, mostly for his authorship of the Declaration of Independence. Naturally they like it, since it espoused virtual anarchy and was literally treasonous under British law at the time. Wills, cowering before Political Correctness, felt he had to appease liberal conventional wisdom by writing gushingly "I have admired Jefferson all my life, and still do. ...there is much else I revere in him." He adds that of his criticism here "that fact does not mean that I would prefer that John Adams had won." We should be suspicious of any symbol people dare not question without such apologies. Why, even Jefferson's sex life was an example of "affirmative action".
Twisting the Constitution to preserving the slave power was almost the only good thing Jefferson did in his long career. This is not because he was protecting ownership of slaves as such, but because he was protecting sacred property rights (carried to their ultimate extreme -- owning other people), and imposing a wonderfully conservative cultural stasis on society. The Democratic lip service to liberalism could never be more than hot air as long as they moved in lockstep with the "slavocracy". Wills loves the "good" liberal Jefferson, but attacks the "bad" conservative one. Like a typical intellectual, he gets it all backwards. He also stops his story short, missing how conservatives haveevolved changed with the times over the years.
Yes, the slave power was overrepresented and disproportionately in control of America before theCivil War War Between The States, but Wills misses how much better off the Southern elite were after that war. Now a black citizen counted for Congress and the electoral college not as three-fifths of a person, but as a whole person. This gave the Southerners an even greater voice in the government. Nevertheless, segregation and denial of voting rights meant the former slaves and their descendants had exactly the same political voice as before -- none whatsoever. The former slaveholders were also spared the burden of owning old unproductive slaves. In the New South those who could not work were simply allowed to starve -- a great cost saving for the plantation owners.
This agrarian utopia lasted until the 1950s when an intrusive U.S. Extreme Court began striking it down, aided by the images broadcast by nosy television cameras of Southern police dogs (really only doing their jobs) attacking crowds of "peaceful" demonstrators. But though segregation has passed away (at least in law), conservatism has continued to grow. Today the owning elite is reinstating a class society, polarized between the haves and the have nots. Once the underclass was all black, and wasn't even allowed to own their own lives in the South. Today, social progress has been made so that both white and black poor are equally free to own nothing but their own lives. ("The law, in its majestic equality, forbids both rich and poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." --Anatole France) Each year Bush's tax and fiscal policies make it more difficult for the middle class to move up in the world and challenge their betters, or even to continue to exist. More of them sink into the growing mass of the working poor, helping keep wages down and profits up -- the very purpose of a sound government. To quote Martha Stewart, a contributor to Democrats who is thankfully about to be shut up and shut away on trumped up charges, this is a GOOD thing.
I'll post another book report in a day or two; check back for more.
I didn't spend all the last two weeks skiing, sunning, and swimming. I also read, beginning with "Negro President": Jefferson and the Slave Power by Garry Wills. (You can also find an excerpt from this on the web in The New York Review of Books.) Wills explains how the "three-fifths" compromise in the Constitution, which counted each slave as three-fifths of a person for Congressional representation, and therefore for Presidential electoral votes, made Jefferson's victory in 1800 possible despite his getting fewer votes. (Don't mention Florida 2000 to me again!) He claims the logic of this so-called corrupt bargain between Southern slave owners and northern democrats led them to further tyranny to protect slavery, including censorship and destruction of civil liberties in the northern states, and even politically motivated attempted impeachments. Now my faithful readers will no doubt expect me to point to all this as an example of the hypocrisy of current Democrats, who claim to represent the will of the majority and stand for judicial independence. No, I'm going to denounce this book instead, no matter how well written and researched it is.
Jefferson is praised as an icon by today's liberals, mostly for his authorship of the Declaration of Independence. Naturally they like it, since it espoused virtual anarchy and was literally treasonous under British law at the time. Wills, cowering before Political Correctness, felt he had to appease liberal conventional wisdom by writing gushingly "I have admired Jefferson all my life, and still do. ...there is much else I revere in him." He adds that of his criticism here "that fact does not mean that I would prefer that John Adams had won." We should be suspicious of any symbol people dare not question without such apologies. Why, even Jefferson's sex life was an example of "affirmative action".
Twisting the Constitution to preserving the slave power was almost the only good thing Jefferson did in his long career. This is not because he was protecting ownership of slaves as such, but because he was protecting sacred property rights (carried to their ultimate extreme -- owning other people), and imposing a wonderfully conservative cultural stasis on society. The Democratic lip service to liberalism could never be more than hot air as long as they moved in lockstep with the "slavocracy". Wills loves the "good" liberal Jefferson, but attacks the "bad" conservative one. Like a typical intellectual, he gets it all backwards. He also stops his story short, missing how conservatives have
Yes, the slave power was overrepresented and disproportionately in control of America before the
This agrarian utopia lasted until the 1950s when an intrusive U.S. Extreme Court began striking it down, aided by the images broadcast by nosy television cameras of Southern police dogs (really only doing their jobs) attacking crowds of "peaceful" demonstrators. But though segregation has passed away (at least in law), conservatism has continued to grow. Today the owning elite is reinstating a class society, polarized between the haves and the have nots. Once the underclass was all black, and wasn't even allowed to own their own lives in the South. Today, social progress has been made so that both white and black poor are equally free to own nothing but their own lives. ("The law, in its majestic equality, forbids both rich and poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." --Anatole France) Each year Bush's tax and fiscal policies make it more difficult for the middle class to move up in the world and challenge their betters, or even to continue to exist. More of them sink into the growing mass of the working poor, helping keep wages down and profits up -- the very purpose of a sound government. To quote Martha Stewart, a contributor to Democrats who is thankfully about to be shut up and shut away on trumped up charges, this is a GOOD thing.
I'll post another book report in a day or two; check back for more.
Saturday, December 20, 2003
OUT TO LAUNCH:
Yes, I do have a life in The Real World, and I'm leaving this morning for a sixteen-day vacation. Picture me skiing down the slopes of a snow-clad mountain (no, I won't let the groupies know which one), then spending Scrooge Day slithering with my fellow hatchlings, then sailing, sunning, and scuba diving somewhere amid the Lesser Antilles. Yes, the Ordinary People should be insanely jealous. I will be back, tanned, rested, recharged and ready to blog, doubtless suffering from Web Withdrawal, after the first weekend of January.
Yes, I do have a life in The Real World, and I'm leaving this morning for a sixteen-day vacation. Picture me skiing down the slopes of a snow-clad mountain (no, I won't let the groupies know which one), then spending Scrooge Day slithering with my fellow hatchlings, then sailing, sunning, and scuba diving somewhere amid the Lesser Antilles. Yes, the Ordinary People should be insanely jealous. I will be back, tanned, rested, recharged and ready to blog, doubtless suffering from Web Withdrawal, after the first weekend of January.
Thursday, December 18, 2003
CENOZOIC PARK:
They were the most terrible monsters ever known. Long extinct, they were brought back to life by an entrepreneur's short-sightedness. Foolish "environmentalists" want to preserve and study them, but they are too dangerous. If we don't preemptively exterminate them, it may be too late. They are evil, and they are hungry, and they will imminently have weapons of mass destruction and conquer and eat us all. They're called DEMOSAURS.
I was there when they broke free. I was one of several invited to visit a new theme park, still under construction, where recreated versions of these creatures would be the star attraction. It was set on the planet Earth, where these horrors had once lived and briefly ruled over another extinct race, the "human beings".
Those humans were part of the deadly EmEsEn Collective, which tried to conquer the galaxy and absorb all other intelligent life. They implanted radio-linked computer chips into their victims' brains which controlled them and made them "cybernetic organisms". The civilized worlds of the Federation of United Sentients were only able to destroy them because of a flaw in their operating system, which caused them to freeze and stare out windows several times each day to "reboot". This pause allowed us to inject them with a strain of deadly virus, imported from and named after another nearby galaxy, which completely wiped them out.
Landing on the planet, we were taken to a tropical island and the lab of the scientist who built the park, Doctor Stevie Hatfull. We should have been worried by what we overheard while waiting to meet him. A voice we later learned was that of Charlton, the park's chief hunter, was warning the doctor to "terminate the raptor program", saying they were "just too damn smart". Then we heard the doctor asking his assistant just what genes he had spliced into the brains of the raptors. Before the door closed we heard that underling say they were from "Abby somebody".
In the waiting room was a gigantic reptile skeleton, standing on its hind legs with front claws in a fighting stance and showing huge teeth. As we gaped at this, Dr. Hatfull came in and told us this was a DEANRANOSAURUS REX. It was the last of the Demosaurs to rule over the humans. It seemed to have the spider-like ability to make huge webs to trap humans and suck away all they had. Later it was sliced to ribbons by a particularly vicious variety of raptors, and the world was then taken over by humans. He said that old enmity seems lasting, because when that same breed of raptors was made here at the park, they did the same thing and ganged up to kill this one. The chief hunter rescued the bones and mounted them here as a memorial.
The doctor told us the park was called "Cenozoic" because that was the geological period when the Demosaurs ruled this planet. The park was located on this island, which seems to have been called "Guantanamo", because this is where the last of these monsters had been caged before finally being killed. All of this involved a lot of guesswork. Since all of the EmEsEn's knowledge was stored only in its distributed computer network, when the humans and other races it had absorbed were wiped out, their history was gone.
Archaeologists did find one ancient computer from before the EmEsEn took over the planet and banned non-implanted devices. It belonged to someone called "ihatealldems". Although its memory was damaged, they recovered fragments of copies from something called "comments" sections, used to communicate on a pre-absorption network called the "web". Unfortunately, the few sections found didn't deal directly with biology. One covered a small sport called "footballs", apparently played on natural grass, since they are referred to as green. Another section may have been for dog fanciers, since it often mentions a rottweiler. Dr. Hatfull admitted this was such a small sampling that it might not be representative, but it was all he had to go on. Based on what was written about the monsters there, he tried to build a picture of what the Demosaurs must have been like.
This horrible species lived at the same time as the humans, whom they domesticated both for food and to cruelly exploit as menial labor. They indoctrinated human children in concentration camps called "public schools", brainwashing them to become obedient slaves and turn over all they produced to the Demosaurs. Those with independent streaks were weeded out by clever propaganda that encouraged them to become homosexual, so that they wouldn't reproduce, and rebelliousness would be bred out of the humans. The monsters ruthlessly banned prayer as a threat to total loyalty to the Demosaurs, and of course constantly searched human burrows to confiscate any weapons the serfs might use to revolt.
We asked why the Demosaurs become extinct, if they were so powerful. He said there were two reasons. First, the humans had great leaders, though they won only on their fourth attempt at rebellion. Each try was led by a different member of the same Gate family. The three failed efforts were sparked by Water (with the "recorder", apparently a weapon using sound), Iran (using the very bloodily named "shredder"), and Monica (who used biological warfare with some form of tightly coiled plant leaves). Finally their brother Bill overthrew the monsters with his implanted chips, which allowed humans to march together in militaristic lockstep against their rulers. The tyrants had become decadent and disorganized after having easily had their way for so long, relying only on some enforcer called "Media", which Bill's EmEsEn was able to bypass.
Second, there seems to have been a biological flaw in the Demosaurs themselves. Many of them were weakened by loss of blood from their overexpanded, leaking hearts. This made them tend to faint away when confronted with loud noises. Bill used this fear against them by attacking them with a breed of trained barking canines, called the faux. These shifted the balance of power and made the monsters themselves the fare. Bill became the First Proprietor and the humans ate the Demosaurs. The doctor fixed this flaw in his recreations by including genes from strong Vulcan hearts.
Unfortunately, no pictures or skeletons of these creatures were ever preserved. Dr. Hatfull had to try and guess at their makeup based on their actions, as denounced by the brave human rebels in those "comments". He assumed that such bloodthirsty monsters must have been reptilian, and so called them "saurians" and used large lizards as his main genetic base. He did have to mix in more intelligence from some other species, chiefly from the Klingons, who seemed to have the necessary ruthless aggressiveness.
He urged us to tour the island and see for ourselves his genetic reconstructions, carefully avoiding the electrified fences. He did admit to one early flawed model which had to be destroyed, the totally scaleless BRYNNERSAUR, because of its juggernaut determination once it had fixed on a target, but he assured us that now nothing could possibly go wrong.
Charlton the hunter took us out for a tour, along with the doctor's two grandchildren, who had heard about the monsters and were excited to see for themselves. The first creature we saw was the tank-sized DUKAKISAURUS. It was easy to avoid, because it shook the ground when it moved and was completely inflexible in its course. Charlton said this flaw went so far that it even failed to defend its own mate when attacked. It calmly ignored us as it rumbled by.
We passed a herd of ostrich-shouldered DENNISKUMINIMUS. These vegetarians were so short they had to stand on their hind legs to reach for tall leaves. They also had the unusual trait of choosing their mates by voting. On the other side of a ditch we saw two BARNOPHRANKSAURUS watching us. They were as tall as humans and had big gills hanging around their necks. Charlton told us they were carnivores, but were too weak to defeat others in battle, so they had developed an ability to spit venom. The poison attacked the ears and deafened humans, then killed them.
Next we came to a creature which was lying helplessly. We learned that was its chronic state. This was a CLENISAURUS ECPLECTICOS. Its species name was taken from a tiny crustacean which also had an unusually long penis. While that was not a problem to a sea creature, the Clenisaurus kept tripping over its own genitals. The hunter said they had included some crocodile genes in this creature, which gave it enlarged tear ducts. It also had empathic powers. It could detect and emulate the emotions of the other creatures around it. Now it was in agony because of the pain of another animal nearby.
Charlton led us to that one, which we found in great distress. The hunter said this three-horned TRILATERALCARTERATOPS HORRIDUS was fed on several hundred pounds of legumes each day, mostly Arachis hypogea, but it would eat anything. He once found it devouring an entire abandoned automobile. The doctor's grandson Timmy, with a boyish interest in antique machinery, asked what kind of car. Charlton said he couldn't remember for sure; he thought it wasn't a Lincoln, but something else from the same manufacturer.
Recently the creature was suffering from a malaise and a lack of energy, after it had tried to eat some Teflon which it hadn't been able to stomach. The monster had been put out to pasture to recover, and now spent its time obsessively building more nests. One of the grandchildren, Luthora, actually went riding on the back of the Trilateralcarteratops' baby. She was talking to it and it was grunting back. I could have sworn they were discussing nuclear proliferation, but I assumed I had imagined it.
The largest of any of the creatures we saw was a huge gold colored GEORGESOROSAUR. It liked to literally throw its massive weight around, rolling over to crush any human rebels against Demosaur rule. After we passed it a herd of chicken sized things ran across the road ahead of us, screeching loudly. Charlton said these were Sharpys, or PROSHARPTOGNATHIDS, tiny scavengers eating the leavings of the larger monsters, and most notable for making irritating noises. We stopped to look at a large colorful MUFTISAUR, which the hunter told us they called "The Dread Westley". It had the most rigid posture we saw in the park, and a series of star-shaped markings on its back.
We were just outside the fenced compound of the D. Rex, as the hunter called the Deanranosaur, when it started raining and our carts came to a sudden halt. Charlton said they were run on electricity from a cable buried in the ground, and we should just wait until the automatic emergency generators started. As we sat there we finally saw a D. Rex. It walked slowly up to the huge electrified fence and sniffed it. Then it kicked up some leaves to hit the fence. Nothing happened. Next it touched the fence, quickly drawing back its arm. Just as we realized that the power must be off for the fence as well, the monster leaped against it and pulled it down, posts and all.
As we sat there terrified, holding still because the hunter said the D. Rex pursued movement, we watched it turn over the other cart and begin sniffing around it. We thought the people in that cart were sure to be eaten, but the monster suddenly raised its head and looked around. Circling about it were several much smaller creatures with long mouths full of sharp teeth. Charlton actually turned pale.
Timmy said the Deanranosaur could easily defeat those smaller guys. The hunter said those weren't guys, they were all females, and they were the most dangerous species in the park, the HILLARAPTOR FEMINAZIUS. Like some worms and insects, they practice parthenogenesis -- reproduction without males. The D. Rex might be bigger and stronger, but they were meaner and much smarter. They were the same breed which had killed the last D. Rex before the humans took over. Almost as soon as they were caged here they had tunnelled under the fence to break free and kill the one whose skeleton stood in the waiting room now. The whole fence had to be rebuilt much deeper to keep them in.
Soon all the monsters were engaged in a bloody battle with each other, and we took advantage of their distraction to get out and flee into the rain. Judging from the sounds behind us, there was a lot of eating going on. We didn't turn to watch. As we passed by the Hillaraptor's pen we saw how they had gotten out. They simply killed enough of their own to pile up the corpses high enough to climb up on the mound and jump over the fence. Charlton wondered as we ran if that meant they had gotten out before the electricity went off. When we got to the waiting room we soon found that they had.
The doors had been smashed, partly devoured corpses were strewn about, and there were plenty of what the hunter recognized as bloody Hillaraptor tracks on the floor. Stepping into the control room, we found the power had been shut off here. Bloody claw marks showed that the killers had cleverly disabled the security by prying a letter off the keypad for the master switch, then thrown it.
I won't bother with the melodramatic details of how we managed to get the power back on and the computers working so the fences were charged again and we could call for help. The Hillaraptors must have won their fight with the D. Rex, because five of them attacked us. They killed three more of us, including Charlton, but not before he shot one. We electrocuted one more, poisoned one (don't ask), and locked one in a freezer.
The last Hillaraptor had the two grandchildren cornered in the waiting room when it was crushed by the falling skull of the D. Rex skeleton. Later, so that they wouldn't be spooked, we assured both children that one of us had climbed up and levered the skull loose so it would fall and save them. But I was there. No one touched it at all. The skull suddenly broke free on its own. I think it was just one last bit of revenge by the dead Deanranosaur for years of savage abuse.
We fled from there by helicopter, and we were lucky to escape. The Hillaraptors are not all dead, and they reproduce at a rapid rate. Demosaurs ruled the humans once. They are smart enough to turn our own weapons against us, and now Hatfull's meddling has eliminated their only flaw. They are an even greater threat to the peace of the galaxy than the humans were. The Federation has banned travel to the island, but scientists are begging for the chance to visit. What we should do is use thermonuclear bombs and destroy the place. Our very future is at stake.
They were the most terrible monsters ever known. Long extinct, they were brought back to life by an entrepreneur's short-sightedness. Foolish "environmentalists" want to preserve and study them, but they are too dangerous. If we don't preemptively exterminate them, it may be too late. They are evil, and they are hungry, and they will imminently have weapons of mass destruction and conquer and eat us all. They're called DEMOSAURS.
I was there when they broke free. I was one of several invited to visit a new theme park, still under construction, where recreated versions of these creatures would be the star attraction. It was set on the planet Earth, where these horrors had once lived and briefly ruled over another extinct race, the "human beings".
Those humans were part of the deadly EmEsEn Collective, which tried to conquer the galaxy and absorb all other intelligent life. They implanted radio-linked computer chips into their victims' brains which controlled them and made them "cybernetic organisms". The civilized worlds of the Federation of United Sentients were only able to destroy them because of a flaw in their operating system, which caused them to freeze and stare out windows several times each day to "reboot". This pause allowed us to inject them with a strain of deadly virus, imported from and named after another nearby galaxy, which completely wiped them out.
Landing on the planet, we were taken to a tropical island and the lab of the scientist who built the park, Doctor Stevie Hatfull. We should have been worried by what we overheard while waiting to meet him. A voice we later learned was that of Charlton, the park's chief hunter, was warning the doctor to "terminate the raptor program", saying they were "just too damn smart". Then we heard the doctor asking his assistant just what genes he had spliced into the brains of the raptors. Before the door closed we heard that underling say they were from "Abby somebody".
In the waiting room was a gigantic reptile skeleton, standing on its hind legs with front claws in a fighting stance and showing huge teeth. As we gaped at this, Dr. Hatfull came in and told us this was a DEANRANOSAURUS REX. It was the last of the Demosaurs to rule over the humans. It seemed to have the spider-like ability to make huge webs to trap humans and suck away all they had. Later it was sliced to ribbons by a particularly vicious variety of raptors, and the world was then taken over by humans. He said that old enmity seems lasting, because when that same breed of raptors was made here at the park, they did the same thing and ganged up to kill this one. The chief hunter rescued the bones and mounted them here as a memorial.
The doctor told us the park was called "Cenozoic" because that was the geological period when the Demosaurs ruled this planet. The park was located on this island, which seems to have been called "Guantanamo", because this is where the last of these monsters had been caged before finally being killed. All of this involved a lot of guesswork. Since all of the EmEsEn's knowledge was stored only in its distributed computer network, when the humans and other races it had absorbed were wiped out, their history was gone.
Archaeologists did find one ancient computer from before the EmEsEn took over the planet and banned non-implanted devices. It belonged to someone called "ihatealldems". Although its memory was damaged, they recovered fragments of copies from something called "comments" sections, used to communicate on a pre-absorption network called the "web". Unfortunately, the few sections found didn't deal directly with biology. One covered a small sport called "footballs", apparently played on natural grass, since they are referred to as green. Another section may have been for dog fanciers, since it often mentions a rottweiler. Dr. Hatfull admitted this was such a small sampling that it might not be representative, but it was all he had to go on. Based on what was written about the monsters there, he tried to build a picture of what the Demosaurs must have been like.
This horrible species lived at the same time as the humans, whom they domesticated both for food and to cruelly exploit as menial labor. They indoctrinated human children in concentration camps called "public schools", brainwashing them to become obedient slaves and turn over all they produced to the Demosaurs. Those with independent streaks were weeded out by clever propaganda that encouraged them to become homosexual, so that they wouldn't reproduce, and rebelliousness would be bred out of the humans. The monsters ruthlessly banned prayer as a threat to total loyalty to the Demosaurs, and of course constantly searched human burrows to confiscate any weapons the serfs might use to revolt.
We asked why the Demosaurs become extinct, if they were so powerful. He said there were two reasons. First, the humans had great leaders, though they won only on their fourth attempt at rebellion. Each try was led by a different member of the same Gate family. The three failed efforts were sparked by Water (with the "recorder", apparently a weapon using sound), Iran (using the very bloodily named "shredder"), and Monica (who used biological warfare with some form of tightly coiled plant leaves). Finally their brother Bill overthrew the monsters with his implanted chips, which allowed humans to march together in militaristic lockstep against their rulers. The tyrants had become decadent and disorganized after having easily had their way for so long, relying only on some enforcer called "Media", which Bill's EmEsEn was able to bypass.
Second, there seems to have been a biological flaw in the Demosaurs themselves. Many of them were weakened by loss of blood from their overexpanded, leaking hearts. This made them tend to faint away when confronted with loud noises. Bill used this fear against them by attacking them with a breed of trained barking canines, called the faux. These shifted the balance of power and made the monsters themselves the fare. Bill became the First Proprietor and the humans ate the Demosaurs. The doctor fixed this flaw in his recreations by including genes from strong Vulcan hearts.
Unfortunately, no pictures or skeletons of these creatures were ever preserved. Dr. Hatfull had to try and guess at their makeup based on their actions, as denounced by the brave human rebels in those "comments". He assumed that such bloodthirsty monsters must have been reptilian, and so called them "saurians" and used large lizards as his main genetic base. He did have to mix in more intelligence from some other species, chiefly from the Klingons, who seemed to have the necessary ruthless aggressiveness.
He urged us to tour the island and see for ourselves his genetic reconstructions, carefully avoiding the electrified fences. He did admit to one early flawed model which had to be destroyed, the totally scaleless BRYNNERSAUR, because of its juggernaut determination once it had fixed on a target, but he assured us that now nothing could possibly go wrong.
Charlton the hunter took us out for a tour, along with the doctor's two grandchildren, who had heard about the monsters and were excited to see for themselves. The first creature we saw was the tank-sized DUKAKISAURUS. It was easy to avoid, because it shook the ground when it moved and was completely inflexible in its course. Charlton said this flaw went so far that it even failed to defend its own mate when attacked. It calmly ignored us as it rumbled by.
We passed a herd of ostrich-shouldered DENNISKUMINIMUS. These vegetarians were so short they had to stand on their hind legs to reach for tall leaves. They also had the unusual trait of choosing their mates by voting. On the other side of a ditch we saw two BARNOPHRANKSAURUS watching us. They were as tall as humans and had big gills hanging around their necks. Charlton told us they were carnivores, but were too weak to defeat others in battle, so they had developed an ability to spit venom. The poison attacked the ears and deafened humans, then killed them.
Next we came to a creature which was lying helplessly. We learned that was its chronic state. This was a CLENISAURUS ECPLECTICOS. Its species name was taken from a tiny crustacean which also had an unusually long penis. While that was not a problem to a sea creature, the Clenisaurus kept tripping over its own genitals. The hunter said they had included some crocodile genes in this creature, which gave it enlarged tear ducts. It also had empathic powers. It could detect and emulate the emotions of the other creatures around it. Now it was in agony because of the pain of another animal nearby.
Charlton led us to that one, which we found in great distress. The hunter said this three-horned TRILATERALCARTERATOPS HORRIDUS was fed on several hundred pounds of legumes each day, mostly Arachis hypogea, but it would eat anything. He once found it devouring an entire abandoned automobile. The doctor's grandson Timmy, with a boyish interest in antique machinery, asked what kind of car. Charlton said he couldn't remember for sure; he thought it wasn't a Lincoln, but something else from the same manufacturer.
Recently the creature was suffering from a malaise and a lack of energy, after it had tried to eat some Teflon which it hadn't been able to stomach. The monster had been put out to pasture to recover, and now spent its time obsessively building more nests. One of the grandchildren, Luthora, actually went riding on the back of the Trilateralcarteratops' baby. She was talking to it and it was grunting back. I could have sworn they were discussing nuclear proliferation, but I assumed I had imagined it.
The largest of any of the creatures we saw was a huge gold colored GEORGESOROSAUR. It liked to literally throw its massive weight around, rolling over to crush any human rebels against Demosaur rule. After we passed it a herd of chicken sized things ran across the road ahead of us, screeching loudly. Charlton said these were Sharpys, or PROSHARPTOGNATHIDS, tiny scavengers eating the leavings of the larger monsters, and most notable for making irritating noises. We stopped to look at a large colorful MUFTISAUR, which the hunter told us they called "The Dread Westley". It had the most rigid posture we saw in the park, and a series of star-shaped markings on its back.
We were just outside the fenced compound of the D. Rex, as the hunter called the Deanranosaur, when it started raining and our carts came to a sudden halt. Charlton said they were run on electricity from a cable buried in the ground, and we should just wait until the automatic emergency generators started. As we sat there we finally saw a D. Rex. It walked slowly up to the huge electrified fence and sniffed it. Then it kicked up some leaves to hit the fence. Nothing happened. Next it touched the fence, quickly drawing back its arm. Just as we realized that the power must be off for the fence as well, the monster leaped against it and pulled it down, posts and all.
As we sat there terrified, holding still because the hunter said the D. Rex pursued movement, we watched it turn over the other cart and begin sniffing around it. We thought the people in that cart were sure to be eaten, but the monster suddenly raised its head and looked around. Circling about it were several much smaller creatures with long mouths full of sharp teeth. Charlton actually turned pale.
Timmy said the Deanranosaur could easily defeat those smaller guys. The hunter said those weren't guys, they were all females, and they were the most dangerous species in the park, the HILLARAPTOR FEMINAZIUS. Like some worms and insects, they practice parthenogenesis -- reproduction without males. The D. Rex might be bigger and stronger, but they were meaner and much smarter. They were the same breed which had killed the last D. Rex before the humans took over. Almost as soon as they were caged here they had tunnelled under the fence to break free and kill the one whose skeleton stood in the waiting room now. The whole fence had to be rebuilt much deeper to keep them in.
Soon all the monsters were engaged in a bloody battle with each other, and we took advantage of their distraction to get out and flee into the rain. Judging from the sounds behind us, there was a lot of eating going on. We didn't turn to watch. As we passed by the Hillaraptor's pen we saw how they had gotten out. They simply killed enough of their own to pile up the corpses high enough to climb up on the mound and jump over the fence. Charlton wondered as we ran if that meant they had gotten out before the electricity went off. When we got to the waiting room we soon found that they had.
The doors had been smashed, partly devoured corpses were strewn about, and there were plenty of what the hunter recognized as bloody Hillaraptor tracks on the floor. Stepping into the control room, we found the power had been shut off here. Bloody claw marks showed that the killers had cleverly disabled the security by prying a letter off the keypad for the master switch, then thrown it.
I won't bother with the melodramatic details of how we managed to get the power back on and the computers working so the fences were charged again and we could call for help. The Hillaraptors must have won their fight with the D. Rex, because five of them attacked us. They killed three more of us, including Charlton, but not before he shot one. We electrocuted one more, poisoned one (don't ask), and locked one in a freezer.
The last Hillaraptor had the two grandchildren cornered in the waiting room when it was crushed by the falling skull of the D. Rex skeleton. Later, so that they wouldn't be spooked, we assured both children that one of us had climbed up and levered the skull loose so it would fall and save them. But I was there. No one touched it at all. The skull suddenly broke free on its own. I think it was just one last bit of revenge by the dead Deanranosaur for years of savage abuse.
We fled from there by helicopter, and we were lucky to escape. The Hillaraptors are not all dead, and they reproduce at a rapid rate. Demosaurs ruled the humans once. They are smart enough to turn our own weapons against us, and now Hatfull's meddling has eliminated their only flaw. They are an even greater threat to the peace of the galaxy than the humans were. The Federation has banned travel to the island, but scientists are begging for the chance to visit. What we should do is use thermonuclear bombs and destroy the place. Our very future is at stake.
Sunday, December 14, 2003
"KILL IT BEFORE IT GROWS":
Several Evil Leftists tried to warn their followers about me when I first started publishing on the web at my old site, especially Dohiyi Mir, the Magpie (who now does most of her posting at Pacific Views), and skippy the bush kangaroo. Their efforts failed because silly liberals have such 'satiable curiosity, and visited me anyway just to see for themselves. I thank those foolish early linkers for helping to lure more unsuspecting leftists into my clever trap.
My readers, of course, being genuinely compassionate conservatives in the Nietzschean sense ("The weak and the failures shall perish: first principle of our love of man. And they shall even be given every possible assistance."), will agree with me that new bloggers starting out should be discouraged from the very start by getting no visitors at all -- if they are fuzzy minded liberals. Several such newbie would-be Eschatons are trying out their blog legs by entering this week's New Weblog Showcase. Let's try and drive them off the web in despair by not going to look at any of these entries:
Several Evil Leftists tried to warn their followers about me when I first started publishing on the web at my old site, especially Dohiyi Mir, the Magpie (who now does most of her posting at Pacific Views), and skippy the bush kangaroo. Their efforts failed because silly liberals have such 'satiable curiosity, and visited me anyway just to see for themselves. I thank those foolish early linkers for helping to lure more unsuspecting leftists into my clever trap.
My readers, of course, being genuinely compassionate conservatives in the Nietzschean sense ("The weak and the failures shall perish: first principle of our love of man. And they shall even be given every possible assistance."), will agree with me that new bloggers starting out should be discouraged from the very start by getting no visitors at all -- if they are fuzzy minded liberals. Several such newbie would-be Eschatons are trying out their blog legs by entering this week's New Weblog Showcase. Let's try and drive them off the web in despair by not going to look at any of these entries:
- Kick the Leftist's entry is Big Corporate vs. 13 y/o girl. Despite a blog name which is clearly a very good idea, this site is just more anti-business propaganda, trying to build up sympathy for their crusade by the story of a mere child. Well, we've all seen how mere children can be used as suicide bombers by terrorists. I won't shed any tears for this potential teenage gang member.
- It's Craptastic!'s entry is What is the point? This is one more attempt to appeal to bleeding heart feelings, even going so far as to use the funeral of a brave soldier killed in Iraq to make its point. This blogger should have followed Bush's example and not even mentioned such a death. Cover the good news instead, like record high numbers on the Dow.
- Respectful of Otters's entry is You didn't really need those HIV drugs, did you? (At least that's what it's called on the Showcase, but the link seems to be off -- they can't even get their act together enough to tell you to scroll down to Dec. 10). Obviously from its name, this blog is either that of a lousy speller or some radical animal lover, and on top of that she's some kind of head shrinker. Clearly a good site to avoid.
- Echidne of the Snakes's entry is Sigh. (Once again, the techno-illiterate leftys can't seem to get their permalinks right, and don't warn you to scroll down to Dec. 4 to read this.) This professed pagan divinity is trying to lure in the unsuspecting with what looks like a personal item, but when she has your attention it turns into another feminist rant.
WIMPING OUT:
Our troops in Iraq have reported Saddam Hussein's capture. Alive. Clearly this is a mistake. There is an old Charles Bronson movie which ends with him shooting someone from a rooftop, then sitting back to wait for the police. When an officer emerges from the stairs and tries to arrest him, Bronson says "You don't know your job, do you? Here, I'll make it easy for you." He then grabs his gun to point it at the policeman, so that the officer will have to shoot him.
The troops in Iraq, just like that policeman, don't know their job. If Saddam lives and is put on trial, he may embarrass Donald Rumsfeld by greeting him as an old friend and supplier. Why couldn't our former Iraqi client have been "accidentally" killed when they found him? Of course we can't expect them to equal that masterpiece by a dictator of Brazil, who announced that the previous ruler had been "poisoned while trying to escape", but surely Karl Rove could have concocted some tale. He has never been troubled by the hobgoblin of small minds.
Why did our soldiers fail to understand what their real job was? Because the media-obsessed Pentagon sent them the wrong message. According to this story, "An Army commander who threatened to kill an Iraqi detainee for refusing to answer questions avoided court-martial when his superior decided to let him retire and pay a $5,000 fine, the Army said yesterday. Lt. Col. Allen West, 42, was relieved of his post and ordered sent from Iraq to his base in Texas after being found guilty of aggravated assault and communicating a threat." Even though the officer exercised creative initiative by firing a gun near the prisoner's head to frighten him, he was still punished.
This has had an effect. Not even George's mockery ("International law? I'd better call my lawyer.") can overcome this terrible example of the "rule of law". Just scare a terrorist, and you'll be subject to punishment. God forbid you should actually kill one. So Saddam gets taken alive. I'm sure the trial lawyers are all happy now, probably toasting with vile French champagne the opportunity for fame defending him. Where is what left wing icon Molly Ivins derides as "tort deform" when we need it? ("The first thing we do, let's kill all the Lawyers." --Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part II, Act IV, Scene 2)
Liberals always denounce the use of torture in interrogations, claiming it is unreliable. Hogwash. The sadly discontinued witch hunts of the seventeenth century and earlier were brilliantly successful. They killed tens of thousands of people across Europe following confessions on the rack. Modern technology like electric cattle prods, combined with drugs, means now we can get anyone to admit to anything, even if they have to make it up. The purpose of a crusade is not to find the facts, but to punish someone for being evil.
Just as our soldiers were intimidated out of doing their job by fear, the masses will go out of their way to avoid even a hint of proscribed conduct, speech, or thought -- if they are convinced that guilt is irrelevant, since the authorities are determined to burn someone at the stake. They will even have a genuine incentive to provide plenty of new victims for the machine. It doesn't matter if their tips are lies. All that counts is the number of people we get to execute, preferably in public, to frighten others into compliance. Witch hunts really do work, if your goal is not some silly liberal idea of an intangible "truth" ("What is Truth? Said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer." --Francis Bacon, Essays, 1597), but rather to terrorize everyone and make them obey, obey, obey. If that's not our purpose, then what's the fun of having a government at all?
Our troops in Iraq have reported Saddam Hussein's capture. Alive. Clearly this is a mistake. There is an old Charles Bronson movie which ends with him shooting someone from a rooftop, then sitting back to wait for the police. When an officer emerges from the stairs and tries to arrest him, Bronson says "You don't know your job, do you? Here, I'll make it easy for you." He then grabs his gun to point it at the policeman, so that the officer will have to shoot him.
The troops in Iraq, just like that policeman, don't know their job. If Saddam lives and is put on trial, he may embarrass Donald Rumsfeld by greeting him as an old friend and supplier. Why couldn't our former Iraqi client have been "accidentally" killed when they found him? Of course we can't expect them to equal that masterpiece by a dictator of Brazil, who announced that the previous ruler had been "poisoned while trying to escape", but surely Karl Rove could have concocted some tale. He has never been troubled by the hobgoblin of small minds.
Why did our soldiers fail to understand what their real job was? Because the media-obsessed Pentagon sent them the wrong message. According to this story, "An Army commander who threatened to kill an Iraqi detainee for refusing to answer questions avoided court-martial when his superior decided to let him retire and pay a $5,000 fine, the Army said yesterday. Lt. Col. Allen West, 42, was relieved of his post and ordered sent from Iraq to his base in Texas after being found guilty of aggravated assault and communicating a threat." Even though the officer exercised creative initiative by firing a gun near the prisoner's head to frighten him, he was still punished.
This has had an effect. Not even George's mockery ("International law? I'd better call my lawyer.") can overcome this terrible example of the "rule of law". Just scare a terrorist, and you'll be subject to punishment. God forbid you should actually kill one. So Saddam gets taken alive. I'm sure the trial lawyers are all happy now, probably toasting with vile French champagne the opportunity for fame defending him. Where is what left wing icon Molly Ivins derides as "tort deform" when we need it? ("The first thing we do, let's kill all the Lawyers." --Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part II, Act IV, Scene 2)
Liberals always denounce the use of torture in interrogations, claiming it is unreliable. Hogwash. The sadly discontinued witch hunts of the seventeenth century and earlier were brilliantly successful. They killed tens of thousands of people across Europe following confessions on the rack. Modern technology like electric cattle prods, combined with drugs, means now we can get anyone to admit to anything, even if they have to make it up. The purpose of a crusade is not to find the facts, but to punish someone for being evil.
Just as our soldiers were intimidated out of doing their job by fear, the masses will go out of their way to avoid even a hint of proscribed conduct, speech, or thought -- if they are convinced that guilt is irrelevant, since the authorities are determined to burn someone at the stake. They will even have a genuine incentive to provide plenty of new victims for the machine. It doesn't matter if their tips are lies. All that counts is the number of people we get to execute, preferably in public, to frighten others into compliance. Witch hunts really do work, if your goal is not some silly liberal idea of an intangible "truth" ("What is Truth? Said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer." --Francis Bacon, Essays, 1597), but rather to terrorize everyone and make them obey, obey, obey. If that's not our purpose, then what's the fun of having a government at all?
